The government is planning new measures from electronic scanners to dockside posters in a bid to clamp down on the cross-Channel tobacco smuggling that is costing more than £2.5bn a year in lost taxes.

Details of the crackdown were revealed by the chancellor as he announced plans to divert to the national health service any additional revenue raised from future real increases in tobacco tax.

Like fuel, cigarette tax in recent years has been linked to an annual "escalator". Mr Brown signalled the end of these automatic increases but implied there would still be a 5% real rise in the price of cigarettes next year with the cash going to the NHS.

"There is a strong public health case for year on year real term increases in the price of cigarettes," he said.

"While we will now make our decisions budget by budget I can announce a new approach: the extra revenues from a 5% real terms increase in cigarette duties would go straight to additional invest ment in the national health service - worth £300m a year; £300m extra for hospitals and health care which could start next April."

The government's initiative "to prevent, detect and punish tobacco smuggling" comes at a time when one in every five packs of cigarettes and 80% of handrolling tobacco smoked in Britain is smuggled.

The anti-smuggling measures proposed by "Tar Tsar" Martin Taylor - the former chief executive of Barclays Bank - includes a national network of fixed and portable x-ray scanners to identify tobacco hidden in freight. There will also be a public information campaign to tell travellers that it is illegal to import to bacco which is not for personal consumption.

In addition, British duty-paid cigarettes will carry a tax mark on the front face of the packet to make identification of smuggled tobacco easier.

There will be new offences and tougher penalties for smugglers, and a new licensing framework which could mean pubs being temporarily closed if they are discovered selling smuggled cigarettes.

But the Tobacco Manufacturers Association said Mr Taylor's recommendations were "irrelevant" because he had not addressed the real problem - which was the huge tax imbalance between Britain and the rest of Europe.

The TMA believes the profit incentive to smugglers is so substantial that cutting the tax is the only way to halt the illegal trade.

"This tinkering with pack markings and scanners does not address the basic problem", said a spokesman.

"We estimate that one in three packs of cigarettes in the UK next year will be smuggled, and the loss to the treasury will be more than £3bn.

"If the chancellor thinks putting 5% on the price of a pack of cigarettes will raise an extra £300m for the NHS he is living in cloud cuckooland, because the revenue is declining".

But anti-smoking group Ash welcomed the clampdown and the decision to divert extra tax revenue to the NHS.